The private-school fee-waiver demand has reached the Centre after a few activists from the state wrote to the public grievance cell of the Prime Minister’s Office.
Kamal Gandhi, under secretary in the human resource development ministry, on Friday wrote a letter to Jharkhand’s principal secretary of school education and literacy A.P. Singh requesting to initiate action on the letters seeking fee waiver in private schools in the state.
Singh has been asked to inform the ministry on the steps taken.
The ministry letter, a copy of which is with The Telegraph, has mentioned three public grievance letters from Jharkhand requesting fee waiver during the lockdown period. One letter was sent by Mango-based activist Darsh Choudhary, Gamharia, Seraikela-Kharsawan resident Rekha Gupta, and Bokaro resident Kumar Priyanshu.
“We had to write this letter as we felt that there is a genuine problem faced by parents in paying fees for the two months (March-April) of the lockdown,” Choudhary said. “Those working in companies will get salaries but what about those in the unorganised sector, daily wage earners and small shopkeepers? Earning members of many families are stranded in other states and their family would also face problems in paying fees.
“We had sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office’s public grievance cell on March 26 informing about the problems faced by parents and requested for waiver of school fees for the two months,” Choudhary said.
“We also knew that private school’s would raise issues of payment of salaries to teachers if they are not allowed to charge fees from students. So we requested the Union government to sanction funds to the schools to tide over the period without seeking fees.”
State education minister Jagarnath Mahto had on March 29 appealed to all private schools of the state to waive off fees during the lockdown period. However, the state government has not issued any order in this regard.
“I have seen the letter and we will look into it. The minister had already made an appeal and we want the private schools to heed the appeal,” said principal education secretary A.P. Singh. “We will look into all aspects before taking a decision on this issue and inform the Union HRD ministry too.”
However, sources in the state education and literacy department confided that a formal directive was difficult as private schools can take legal recourse as they do not receive any financial grant from the state government.
“We have to pay salaries to teaching and non-teaching staff and fees are our major source of income,” said B. Chandrasekhar, secretary of the Jamshedpur Unaided Private School Association and a senior functionary of DBMS English School, Kadma. “Most of the schoolteachers are doing online classes for students and it does not seem feasible to waive off school fees at the moment.”
It is an issue that has pan-India resonance. In Calcutta, for instance, a few private schools have allowed parents the flexibility of paying the fees for the first quarter (April-June) at the end of the quarter.